隐私

0. The short version

Here's the plain-language version. The rest of this page fills in the legal detail, but this is what actually matters.

• Your files are never our business. Every tool runs inside your own browser. We never see, receive, upload, or store the documents you work with — not even for a second on a server.
• What we collect is small, and mostly anonymous. A few usage signals (like which tool you opened) and the standard technical logs every website keeps. We may also use a third-party advertising provider (ads to keep this free) — we don't currently serve ads, and no advertising cookies are set; when advertising is enabled, it will have its own on/off switch (see §7).
• You're in control of the optional stuff. In the EU, UK, and Switzerland, our advertising provider's cookies stay off until you say yes. Everywhere else, you can turn them off any time — via "Cookie preferences" in the footer, your browser's Global Privacy Control signal, or by emailing us.
• Questions, requests, or something feels off? Email Show email any time — see §13.

Want the full detail — exactly what we collect, why, for how long, and your rights under GDPR, CCPA, and similar laws? Read on below.

1. Who we are

pdf-combiner.com is operated by:

If you're in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, ZIX DEV Inc is the controller responsible for your personal data as described here.

2. Your files never leave your device

Your files never leave your device. Combine, split, compress, rotate, organize, and convert — every tool runs entirely inside your browser, using self-hosted, open-source libraries (pdf-lib, pdf.js, JSZip) that run locally on your machine. We never receive, see, upload, or store the documents or pages you work with.

This isn't just a promise — it's built into the code:

• Our security policy (Content-Security-Policy: connect-src 'self') makes it technically impossible for the app to send a network request anywhere except pdf-combiner.com itself — there is no way to smuggle your file bytes out, to us or to anyone else.
• No account, sign-up, or login is required for any tool.
• Nothing is uploaded, transmitted, copied, or retained. Close the tab or refresh the page, and whatever you loaded is gone.
• We verify this automatically before every release, with our own zero-network-egress, offline-mode, and CSP tests.

Everything else on this page is about the small amount of other information involved in running a public website — described precisely below, not with a vague "we collect nothing."

3. What we collect — and what we don't

In short: what reaches us or our partners is (a) a handful of anonymous usage signals, (b) ordinary website access logs, and (c) — if we ever activate an advertising integration — advertising data our advertising provider would process as described in §7. Your documents themselves never reach us or anyone else, including our advertising provider. Nothing about advertising changes that.

4. Why we use this data — and our legal bases

If you're in California (or a similar U.S. state): if we activate an advertising integration, sharing data with our advertising provider so it can show ads will count as a "share," and quite possibly also a "sale," of personal information under the CCPA/CPRA (Cal. Civ. Code §1798.140). That's the basis for the opt-out right described in §10, including Global Privacy Control (GPC).

5. Analytics in detail

We run one measurement tool — Plausible Analytics, self-hosted — and it never sees your files: not a file name, not a byte, not anything derived from them.

5.1 — Plausible Analytics (self-hosted, cookieless) — active for every visitor, everywhere, right now, with no consent choice required:

• What it sends: the page path you visited, the referring site (if any), your approximate country/region (derived at our server from your IP address, which is never stored), and — where it applies — a tagged event such as an outbound-link click or a file-download-link click. Nothing else.
• Product-usage events: as you use the tools, we also send Plausible a few tagged, anonymous events — which tool you opened; whether you added a file, and roughly how many ("1," "2–5," or "6+," never the exact number); whether the operation you ran started, finished successfully, or failed (and if it failed, a general category like "wrong file type" or "file too large" — never the actual error text); roughly how long it took, in a coarse bracket (e.g. "1–3 seconds," never the precise time); and whether you downloaded the result. Nothing here includes a file name, file content, or anything about what's inside your file — Plausible sees exactly as little about your files as everything else on this page (§2).
• What it never sends: file names, file content, exact file counts or timings, actual error text, or anything else derived from your files. Whether it's ordinary page-level metadata or one of the product-usage events above, Plausible only ever sees the coarse categories described here — it has no way to see the PDF you're combining or converting, which is generated and stays entirely inside your browser (§2).
• No cookies, no persistent identifier: to count same-day unique visitors without cookies, Plausible computes a one-way, scrambled combination of your IP address, browser, our domain, and a secret that's thrown away and re-created every 24 hours. Nothing is stored that could later identify you or link your visits across days or devices.
• Self-hosted — not a third party. This runs on ZIX DEV Inc's own server (plausible.zixdev.com), not an outside analytics company. The data stays inside ZIX DEV Inc; it is never sold, shared, or sent to our advertising provider or anyone else (§9).
• Why no consent toggle: it stores or accesses nothing on your device — no cookie, no local storage, no fingerprinting script — so it doesn't trigger the cookie-consent rule in the first place (§6). It also isn't affected by your browser's Global Privacy Control signal: that signal asks us to stop selling/sharing your data or tracking you across sites, and Plausible does neither to begin with. GPC still turns off our advertising provider, as described in §6/§10.

6. Cookies, local storage & your choices

We use a standard, category-based cookie preference center. Click "Cookie preferences" in the footer any time to open it.

• In the EEA, UK, or Switzerland: you'll see a short banner with "Accept All" and "Reject All" buttons of equal size and prominence, plus a "Manage" link that opens the full preference center. Nothing in the Advertising category runs until you make a choice — accepting and rejecting are equally easy, with no pre-ticked boxes.
• Elsewhere: the same banner and preference center are available, but Advertising may run by default; turn it off any time.
• Inside the preference center, "Reject All" turns Advertising off; "Confirm my choices" applies exactly the toggle position you've set. Both sit alongside "Accept All."
• Change your mind anytime via "Cookie preferences" in the footer — it reopens the preference center with your current choices already reflected.
• California and other U.S. states: see §10 for your "Do Not Sell or Share" right — it turns off Advertising, since sharing it with our advertising provider can count as a "sale"/"share." We also automatically honor your browser's Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal — no extra action needed from you.
• We keep a record of your choices, as evidence of compliance.

7. Advertising

pdf-combiner.com may show ads through a third-party advertising provider. Ads would help keep the tools free.

Right now: the integration is built in but not yet showing ads (we're waiting on the provider's own account approval). Everything below describes exactly what happens once it goes live — we'll update the effective date above, name the specific provider here and link to its own privacy and ad-choices tools, and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before that happens.

• Advertising. When a page carries an ad, our advertising provider (and its own ad partners) may set cookies and process your approximate location, device/browser information, the page you're on, and ad-interaction signals — and, where you've consented or by default outside the EEA/UK/Switzerland, use this to personalize the ads you see.
• Cookies used by advertising vendors — including Google. When advertising is enabled, third-party vendors, including Google, will use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites. In particular, Google's use of advertising cookies will enable it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the Internet. You can opt out of personalized advertising from Google at any time at Google Ads Settings, and opt out of some other third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices — both opt-outs work whether or not ads on this site are live.
• It never touches your files. It's a page-level script, entirely separate from the file-processing engine in §2 — it has no access to, and never receives, the documents you work with.
• Consent, before anything happens (EEA/UK/Switzerland). No cookie is set and no ad-personalization signal is sent until you opt in through our cookie preference center — Advertising has its own toggle (§6), consistent with GDPR/UK-GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive.
• California and other U.S. states. Sharing data with our advertising provider this way counts as a "share," and plausibly also a "sale," of personal information under the CCPA/CPRA. Opt out anytime via Global Privacy Control or by emailing us (§10).
• Manage your choices via "Cookie preferences" in the footer — we'll link the provider's own ad-choices tool here once it's active.
• What the provider does with this data will be described in its own privacy policy and terms once it's active — we don't control, and won't be responsible for, its processing once data reaches it. We'll link its policies here at that point.
• Retention. Advertising data follows the provider's own retention practices (§8).

8. Data retention

9. Sharing, subprocessors & international transfers

• We don't sell your data directly — but see the rest of this section and §10 for why using a third-party advertising provider still counts as a "sale"/"share" under California law, if it ever goes live.
• Plausible Analytics (self-hosted) — not a third party. Plausible runs on ZIX DEV Inc's own server (plausible.zixdev.com) — we are not sending your data to an outside analytics company. No subprocessor, no new vendor, no data flow beyond what already exists inside ZIX DEV Inc for running this site.
• Our advertising provider. Once active, using it means the provider receives the data in §7 directly from your browser (and sometimes from us). Here, the provider acts as an independent controller of its own — it decides how it uses that data for its own advertising purposes, under its own privacy policy.
• Cloudflare (hosting). Our website and analytics endpoint run on Cloudflare's global network. This is the only third party that sees the technical logs in §3 in the normal course of serving the site — and, since your files never leave your browser, Cloudflare never sees them either.
• Cross-border transfers. Cloudflare's global network, and — once active — our advertising provider's own infrastructure, may process data outside your home country, including in the United States (where we're based). Once we name the specific provider (§7), we'll also name its recognized transfer safeguard (such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and/or Standard Contractual Clauses) here. (The exact safeguard covering our Cloudflare hosting arrangement is still being confirmed against our hosting agreement and outside counsel; we'll update this once that's on file.)
• Today, the parties handling personal data for pdf-combiner.com are Cloudflare (hosting) and ZIX DEV Inc itself (Plausible Analytics, self-hosted — not an outside party). No advertising provider is active yet — we do not currently serve ads, and no advertising cookies are set; once a provider is active, we will name it here. No one else.

10. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Know / access what personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate data.
• Delete personal data we hold about you.
• Restrict or object to certain processing.
• Port your data to another provider.
• Withdraw consent — for Advertising cookies in the EEA/UK/Switzerland, anytime via "Cookie preferences" in the footer (§6).
• California (CCPA/CPRA): everything above, plus the right to know what categories we've collected, and to opt out of "sale" or "share" — just turn on Global Privacy Control (GPC) in your browser (we honor it automatically for advertising) or contact us below. You won't be discriminated against for using any of these rights.
• Other U.S. states (Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and similar laws): a comparable right to opt out of targeted advertising, through the same GPC/"Cookie preferences" mechanism.

How to use these rights: email us at Show email. Since there are no accounts or logins, we may ask for a little information just to confirm a request is really about you — though in most cases there's little to nothing on file to begin with.

How fast we respond: within 30 days (GDPR) or 45 days (CCPA/CPRA), whichever applies.

Not happy with our answer? If you're in the EEA or UK, you can complain to your local data protection authority — though we'd appreciate the chance to make it right first, at Show email.

11. Children's privacy

pdf-combiner.com isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13 (or the relevant age where you live). Since there's no account and files are processed only in your browser, we don't knowingly collect personal information from children through the core product. We've configured our advertising integration as general-audience only — not child-directed — and don't knowingly serve personalized ads to children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, or been served a personalized ad, contact us at Show email and we'll address it.

12. Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy as our practices change — for example when advertising goes live, we add new features, or regulators issue new guidance. We'll post the revised version here with a new effective date, and for material changes (like turning on new cookies), we'll give clear notice and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent again before the change takes effect.

13. Contact us